A number of people have been injured after at least one gunman apparently targeting black people opened fire in the Italian city of Macerata, according to reports.

The mayor of Macerata, located about 125 miles (200km) east of Rome, said a “person who sowed panic in our city” was captured after locals were told to stay inside for their own safety.

“The person who sowed panic in our city this morning was captured. You can get out of your homes and pick up the kids from school!” Mayor Romano Carancini said in a statement posted on local Facebook sites.

Just an hour earlier, officials had told locals to stay indoors as an “armed man in a car is shooting in the city.”

The website of newspaper Corriere della Sera said a man fired from a car window at two young African migrants shortly after 11am. (10am UK time) Saturday, injuring one of them. A short while later another migrant and an African woman were shot.

Italian police confirmed that all those injured were of “foreign nationality.”

It was unclear how many perpetrators were involved but Italian newspaper La Repubblica said there may have been two people in a black Alfa Romeo.

At least seven people were injured in the attack, according to local reports, and five have been taken to hospital, according to local media reports.The website of newspaper Corriere della Sera said a man fired from a car window at two young African migrants shortly after 11am. (10am UK time) Saturday, injuring one of them. A short while later another migrant and an African woman were shot.

Italian police confirmed that all those injured were of “foreign nationality.”

It was unclear how many perpetrators were involved but Italian newspaper La Repubblica said there may have been two people in a black Alfa Romeo.

At least seven people were injured in the attack, according to local reports, and five have been taken to hospital, according to local media reports.

Four migrants were fighting for their lives on Friday after being shot during a giant brawl in Calais, in what the French government called an “intolerable” escalation of violence in a port that serves as a gateway to Britain.

Twenty-two people were hospitalised with injuries after three fights across the city on Thursday that drew in hundreds of the migrants camped out in the hope of stowing away on trucks bound for England, according to officials.

Four Eritreans between 16 and 20 years old were shot in the neck, chest, abdomen and spine at a food distribution point, and remained in critical condition Friday evening. A fifth who was also shot was not facing life-threatening injuries.

Police were searching for a 37-year-old Afghan, a suspected migrant smuggler, over the attack.

The prefecture of the Pas-de-Calais had said earlier that two confrontations between Afghan and Eritrean migrants culminated in the gunfire. It is unusual for migrants to carry firearms.

The shootings are the most serious clash in recent times between migrants around Calais. French Interior Minister Gerard Collomb headed to the city for late-night meetings with officials.

Tensions have been high in Calais, where hundreds of migrants hoping to sneak across the English Channel huddle against the cold and police have orders to try to keep them from setting up camp. However, some officers have been criticized for overzealous policing.

The Pas-de-Calais prefecture said security forces were trying to protect Afghan migrants during a melee with Eritreans when the injuries happened.

The prefecture said the gunfire was the culmination of a showdown between Afghan and Eritrean migrants, fighting each other with sticks and stones, after a meal distribution near the Calais hospital, outside the town center.

In a second confrontation, up to 200 Eritrean migrants cornered 30 Afghans near the former site of a makeshift migrant camp that housed thousands of people before it was evacuated and destroyed in October 2016.

After police moved in “to protect the Afghan migrants,” the four were shot, the prefecture said.

There were no signs of tension at the site of the attack on Friday, but, according to an official source, raids by states services “intensified”, with several buses taking mainly Afghan migrants to other centres in the region.